1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a sensor device having at least two sensor modules.
2. Description of the Related Art
Sensor devices have been used in vehicles for many years for detecting the vehicle kinematics and make it possible to regulate the operating dynamics of a vehicle (e.g., in ESP systems) or to control the safety functions of the vehicle, such as triggering the airbag. Such sensor devices must meet high demands with regard to their susceptibility to failure and reliability.
For example, published German patent application document DE 10 2007 057 441 A discloses a sensor device having a sensor module situated on a printed board, the sensor module being essentially entirely enclosed in a volume-elastic medium, the volume-elastic medium having a low-pass behavior. The low-pass behavior advantageously allows the coupling of higher-frequency interference signals in the sensor device to be suppressed with the aid of damping, and to thus ensure the proper operation of the sensor device.
While such a low-pass behavior is perfectly desirable for many sensor types which are used for chassis regulation, such as yaw-rate sensors, other sensor types, such as crash sensors, essentially require an undamped power transmission of the vehicle and the coupling of higher-frequency oscillations. In order to meet these various demands, different sensor types have each hitherto been placed in a separate casing, thus requiring a disadvantageously great installation space and incurring relatively high manufacturing costs. In the related art, no sensor device is known so far which allows the advantageous combination of different sensor types, which operate in different frequency ranges and require a different damping behavior of the surrounding medium, in only one casing and thus the implementation of sensor devices which are particularly compact with regard to installation space.